Give Your Garage a Makeover
The garage is potentially the most toxic space in any house, which should come as no surprise when you think about what's in it. Start with the car fumes, road grime, road salts and other unwelcome tire and shoe hitchhikers, add the stored paints and stains, gasoline cans, lawn and garden chemica...
Modular Vacation Homes
A busy couple lives in Atlanta and wants to build a ski house in Telluride, Colo. They would like to be on the slopes for the coming ski season, but their busy lives prevent them from traveling to and from Colorado on a regular basis to follow up on the progress of their house. For this couple, m...
Reducing Your Home's Carbon Footprint
How big is your home's carbon footprint? It's a question many homeowners are asking these days, as evidence continues to mount that humans are changing the earth's climate. A carbon footprint is the measure of how much carbon dioxide is being emitted through the burning of fossil ...
SH Bookshelf: Carbon Busters, Organic Lawns
You can give both your home and your lawn an eco-friendly makeover this summer, as described in two new books. The Carbon Buster's Home Energy Handbook, by Godo Stoyke, an energy efficiency consultant, explains that carbon busting - that is, reducing carbon emissions by making your home more ener...
Building Better Coastal Homes
Coastal building is undergoing a dynamic change, as evidenced by two new residential communities in hurricane-prone regions. Audubon Village is a new master-planned coastal community going up on Bolivar Peninsula, a 27-mile-long barrier island on the Texas Gulf Coast north of Galveston - and when we...
Bamboo Deck Tiles
Bamboo is moving outside, which makes sense, since that's where it originated anyway. A popular alternative wood for interior flooring and countertops, bamboo also is an ideal sustainable wood to use for exterior fencing, furniture and deck tiling. Bamboo Hardwoods, based in Seatt...
How Low Can You Go?
During the summer months, many smart homeowners turn their thoughts from indoor to outdoor home improvement projects. But outdoor ventures like new lawns, landscaping and gardening can be among the biggest water-wasters around.Water is an important resource that needs to be used more efficie...
Safe Houses
The numbers associated with Hurricane Katrina, which blew through the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, were staggering - thousands of homes and lives affected, billions of dollars of damage. And while the overall devastation was a stark reminder of the power of nature's fury, more than likely it w...
Boost Your Homes Wildfire Defense
This year's wildfire season, which lasts through August, is expected to be more active than usual due to drought conditions and higher-than-normal summer temperatures, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Homes in the Southwest, Southeast (including all of Florida), northern Rockies, N...
Keeping Homes Cool
As temperatures climb during the summer months, homeowners are looking for ways to keep their houses cool without heating up their air conditioning budgets. There are a number of ways homeowners can keep their homes cooler, such as planting shade trees around the home to keep the sun off the roof...
Natural Decks
Despite it's reputation, untreated wood decking can last a lifetime all on its own. Choosing the right species and grade of wood, and installing it properly, are the key steps to a long-lived, natural alternative to either pressure-treated wood decking or the composite wood options being populari...
Build a Better Greenhouse
Today's greenhouses are more than just functional spaces for growing plants - they've evolved into living spaces, where homeowners can entertain, enjoy an afternoon during inclement weather or just wile away the hours in a serene setting. When properly built, they also can add value to any house. To...
Energy-Saving Awnings
Homeowners have long installed awnings as a way to shade windows, improve the appearance of their homes or provide a shaded area to sit outside on a warm, sunny afternoon. But awnings also can have a positive affect on your energy bill, according to a new study conducted by the Center for Sustainabl...
Green-Ribbon Panels
Stick-built homes took another step down the long road to extinction recently with the introduction of a new type of panel building system. Called kama Energy Efficient Building Systems, or "kama-eebs" for short, the building panels are two-and-a-half times stronger than wood, are 60-percent more...
Eco-Landscaping: Go Green and Native
There's a new look on residential streets across the country these days. Eco-friendly homeowners are replacing their lawns with native plants and trees. They're landscaping to conserve rainwater and attract birds and butterflies, and they're using everything from old newspapers to broken concrete...
Toilets That Make Sense
The average family uses about 400 gallons of water per day, according to estimates, with up to 26 percent of that daily usage attributed to flushing toilets. To reduce some of that water usage - and trim water bills as well - homeowners can install some of the newer low-flow toilets, such as thre...
Austin Arts and Crafts Home
The city of Austin, Texas, is known for lots of things: It has been called the "live music capital of the world," 6th Street is now almost as infamous as Bourbon Street and, of course, there's the Texas Longhorns football team. But more importantly, Austin is becoming known for its green ...
